I’ve always loved homes that help me dream: high ceilings, lots of natural sunlight, the feeling of buttoned-down physical security, nature at its beck and call, and some sort of inspiring view. Maybe this is because I grew up in a strict household with little space to step out of the conventional path.
But even in my childhood home, I found a place to dream. Every morning, I would sit by the balcony that faced a skinny stream and a few trees and sip my tea, no matter how stressed my mother was cooking in the outdoor kitchen or my father was washing the car before work. And it also helped that my parents allowed us to pick paint for our rooms: I picked purple, and my brother blue.
The first time I ever rented a place was in Salem, Oregon, when I went to graduate school in the US. I had to share my place with a fellow student, a sweet Chinese girl, because I was new to the whole scene and needed to share my financial and psychological burdens with an international student.
This place was on the ground floor and didn’t have much of a view, but I felt pretty secure behind the access-controlled gates. Rose, the apartment manager, was a 50-year-old blonde with heavy makeup and a side of pure American boldness. Here, I learned that I’m not that into sharing my home with apartment mates unless they are family members I like and love or a romantic partner. My apartment mate was generous and courteous, but I had begun equating home with freedom by then.
When I interned at the Nike campus in Beaverton, Oregon, as part of my graduate program, I rented my next apartment on my own in downtown Portland for the summer. This apartment was on a higher floor, overlooking the South Park Blocks, which was a lush patch of trees elongated over many blocks that housed a sumptuous farmer’s market over the weekend. Students from Portland State University hustled and bustled between different campus buildings all day. The only issue with this place was that it was adjacent to the elevators. However, although I heard the elevator bells from my living room, I don’t remember my sleep being impacted that much.
This was a challenging summer for me, as this was the very first time I was part of a world-renowned brand. In addition to the pressures of the brand name, I felt like an imposter because I wasn’t much of a sportswoman. I had barely started running that year. On intern orientation day, we were asked to carry out certain tasks around the campus as a group. The group that completed all these tasks in the shortest amount of time won. So, my group of largely young bones (I was in my late twenties then) was running around, while I scampered around breathless.
When I was a teenager, I stood still on a netball court in rebellion and apathy. My mother wasn’t much of a sportswoman either. Sport was the language of men in my family. My father, an accomplished boxer at the national level, among many other revelries like rugby, and my brother, a cricketer-turned-coxswain, and now a triathlete.
But, it’s not like I pretended to be a sportswoman at the internship interview either; I simply capitalized on my passion for watching cricket and the solid work experience I had in technology. This rental facing the South Park Blocks soothed me to bed every night. It whispered that I had every right to be in this highly desired internship program. I took refuge in it completely.
I kept calm, carried on, and barely shared my feelings with the man I was dating at that time or my friends. Not because they wouldn’t listen, but because I couldn’t listen to myself.
